


Long Walk To Forever

by choicescarfsylveon



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Engagement, Infidelity, Inspired by a short story, Kurt Vonnegut, M/M, Marriage Proposal, War, veteran
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 22:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12094701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choicescarfsylveon/pseuds/choicescarfsylveon
Summary: They had grown up next door neighbors, and best friends, but there was never any talk of love between them. When they were young they were afraid, that an admission of love would change things too permanently.Now they were in their twenties, and had not seen each other for five years. Blaine had been deployed in Afghanistan while Kurt had stayed home to go to school. Now Kurt was getting married. Blaine knew he had to say it.They may have never talked of love, but he knew it was there. He knew that Kurt knew it too. And things were about to change permanently.AU





	Long Walk To Forever

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Kurt Vonnegut short story of the same name. Enjoy xo

They had grown up next door neighbors on the fringe of a city, near fields and woods and orchards. All their lives they played in nature, and were best friends, but there was never any talk of love between them. When they were young, they were afraid, having been each other’s foundation, that an admission of love would change things too permanently.

 

Now they were in their twenties, and had not seen each other for five years. Blaine had been deployed in Afghanistan, while Kurt had stayed home to go to school. Now Kurt was getting married, set to leave the house he grew up in just weeks from that day.

 

That day, in the mid afternoon, Blaine came to knock on Kurt’s door. Still wearing his full uniform, he knew he wasn’t expected, and knew what he was risking. Still, he had to say it. They may have never talked of love, but he knew it was there. He knew that Kurt knew it too. And things were about to change permanently.

 

“Blaine!” Kurt jumped to embrace him on the porch, and Blaine laughed, squeezing him tight and swinging him round. “You just got home?” Kurt exclaimed, when Blaine put him down. “Why didn’t you call me?”

 

Blaine had always been a shy person, even with Kurt; he covered that shyness by speaking as though nothing disquieted him, even during matters that made him feel desperate. Being a soldier had taught him to fake extroversion, but outside of that culture, he was soft spoken, and spoke very little unless it was to Kurt. Always with a smile on his face around Kurt, too.

 

“I haven’t used the number you have for me since I left,” Blaine said. “I’m not even sure where that phone is. Could you—could you come for a walk with me?”

 

Kurt was carrying a thick, glossy magazine he had been reading on the couch, devoted entirely to this season’s wedding trends. His husband-to-be had wanted to help him prepare their expensive affair, but this was his life’s work, he trusted no one else with his grand design, his vision. Plus, he had his own money to take care of things.

 

“A walk?” Kurt repeated. “Why don’t you come in, I just made these butter pecan squares—“

 

“If you invite me in there with you, and your oh so tempting baking, I don’t think I’ll ever walk out again.” Blaine winked. “And I can’t stay too long.”

 

“Still so mysterious, even after all this time. So, what, are you just on temporary leave?”

 

“You could say that.”

 

“I swear, I thought I saw you one day, do you know that? Two years ago, I was at Kroger buying milk and Krispy Kremes, and he looked up at me and he looked just like you. Anyway. Where are we walking?”

 

They left their neighborhood and crossed the path that led into the woods, with its brown-leaf floor and thick foliage ceiling. They could get easily got lost out here, as they often had when they were children, in the seemingly endless wilderness. They held hands now just like they did then, and Kurt had no idea what depths of this forest his quiet Blaine would lead him to this time. It had been so long since they’d been here, but he wasn't scared. It looked just as he remembered it.

 

This was their place, the place were they had often found love, not with each other, or at least not consciously, but in their communion with nature.

 

“You have to stay for the wedding,” Kurt said to him. “I design them for a living now, so mine is going to be huge. I didn’t think to send you an invite, I didn’t think that you could be here, but you are now. Your parents are coming.”

 

“I can’t. I wish I could, though.”

 

“That’s okay. Your furlough, it isn’t for long enough?”

 

“Uh, well, it’s not actually furlough. I’m AWOL.”

 

“Blaine, you’re not!”

 

“I’m afraid I am.”

 

“Why? Did something happen to your parents?”

 

“No, they’re in the Philippines, on vacation. Don’t you know that? Our moms still cook together at your house every Sunday.”

 

“You can’t go AWOL just because of me.”

 

“Who says this is just because of you?”

 

But Blaine punctuated this statement with a kiss to the top of Kurt’s hand, a bashful smile.

 

“Okay.” Kurt said, breathless. “So why are we walking out here?”

 

“Because I know you haven’t come out, since I’ve been gone.”

 

“Is it that obvious? I mean, I know I’m pale, but I do get out sometimes, when I’m not inundated with indoor work. Also, I tried spray tanning last week. Never again.”

 

“I understand it. Not the spray tanning thing, the you being busy thing. You’re successful, Kurt. You have the job of your dreams, and full time school, and a husband. It’s not all the time you get a moment to breathe, and slow down, and be in nature again, is it?”

 

Kurt realized he left his cell phone sitting on the living room couch. He knew it had been an hour, maybe half of one more, from the periwinkle color of the sky through the trees. “How long are you staying?”

 

“Just tonight.”

 

“Where are you going back to?”

 

“Fort Bragg, in North Carolina.”

 

“You’ll be in trouble then, right?”

 

“Not as much trouble as I would’ve been, had I stayed. But yes, I will be.”

 

“This is crazy. Do your parents know you’re here?”

 

“They don’t, unless yours do.”

 

“Mine are going to think that this is crazy.”

 

“Well Kurt, love often makes a man do crazy things.”

 

They came to a sharp upturn of rock, which Blaine helped Kurt climb, leading to a clearing where the rest of the tall woods could be seen for miles on end.

 

“What a crazy time to tell me that you love me,” Kurt said. “Why now?”

 

“Let’s keep walking.”

 

“You know that I’m getting married. You know that I can’t leave this.”

 

“I haven’t asked you to.”

 

“How did you expect me to react? Did you think I was just going to say yes, when we got to where we’re going?”

 

“It appears that you think that I’m proposing.”

 

“Something like that!”

 

“Polygamy isn’t legal in this part of the world, is it yet? Have I really been gone that long?”

 

“You have no right.”

 

“Kurt, I brought you out here to say goodbye, not hello. I told you, as much as I wish I could, I can’t stay.”

 

“Where are we going, then? You came all the way here, traveled seven thousand miles, just to walk with me? Is someone trying to kill you?”

 

“My commanders, maybe. If I’d gone on that mission, I would’ve died. No doubt about it.”

 

“So what happens to you now?”

 

“Dishonorable discharge. I lose my rank and my pay. A couple months, maybe a year of confinement.”

 

“Confinement? Like prison?”

 

“It’s like prison, probably worse, though. Here’s to hoping they don’t find me guilty of desertion.”

 

“Why would you run?”

 

“I didn’t want to die. I wanted to be here, with you.”

 

“I love you too, you know. If that’s what this is about, if you wanted to hear me say it.”

 

“I’ll admit, that was part of it. But I don’t want you to leave him for me, or anything like that. I’m here to congratulate you.”

 

“How, by making me regret not telling you forever? He’ll be pissed that you brought me here, and broke open all my feelings for you—”

 

“Oh, Kurt. I’m happy that you’re happy.”

 

“Well maybe I’m not happy. Did you think of that? Maybe I think about you dying all the time. I hate you for leaving, for not caring whether you lived or died.”

 

Kurt kissed him suddenly, hard and passionate, and Blaine got caught up in it. Suddenly it all made sense to him. The minutes of his life had always been culminating towards this moment; even though he ran away, and threw his life into his fight, this had always been waiting for him at the end of it.

 

Afterwards, they walked on again. They climbed down from the clearing and fell deeper into the woods, in no chosen, clear direction. Kurt took his hand again.

 

“Whatever happens to me, I just wanted you to know how I felt,” Blaine said to Kurt then. “It wasn’t fair, me leaving you with things so open-ended. Promising you that I would come back, always flirting but never making it clear. I wasn’t joking when I said we should get married if I came back alive, and we know that. But I could’ve been dead at any moment, so I don’t blame you, for not wanting to wait. We both need this right now. Closure.”

 

“It’s not true, that I’m not happy. Sometimes I am, even if I feel guilty for it, that you’re stuck in that horrible place and I’m here tasting champagne and sniffing roses. He gets me, and really loves me, I know I’m the luckiest guy in the world to be marrying him. But still, I’ve been waiting for you. Inside, I have. Waiting every day for you at that door, to take me back to the way things were. The way you are right now.”

 

“Only for one night.”

 

“I shouldn’t be kissing you.”

 

Still, he was.

 

“How did we get so far from home?”

 

Now Kurt lie next to him beneath apple trees in a large orchard, the shadows of the leaves growing to the east, bees humming above them. The sun set violet and pink and orange all around them. They’d both slept, for hours each of them.

 

“One foot in front of the other,” Blaine said to Kurt, “through leaves, over bridges.”

 

“That’s from that book I used to read you, when we had our picnics here.”

 

“You remember.”

 

“I won’t ever forget you.”

 

Blaine went into his pocket, discovered a shining ring, showed it to him.

 

“It appears that you were right about my proposing.”

 

“Oh my god, Blaine. No!”

 

“No, you wouldn’t marry me?”

 

“Yes, I would marry you. I hate you for this, I really do, you know that?”

 

“I just wanted to do this for you, before I left.”

 

“Too late.”

 

“Too late.”

 

They kissed again, rolling together in the grass, losing themselves in each other as the sun sunk beyond the horizon.

 

Blaine stood first afterwards, stretched his arms above his head. His uniform was wrinkled, out of sorts.

 

“That was a nice walk. I needed that.”

 

“Ready to turn yourself in?” Kurt stayed seated on the orchard floor, stared at him.

 

“Like a lamb to the slaughter. Thank you, Kurt.”

 

“For what?”

 

“For wearing the ring.”

 

“It’s your grandfather’s ring. It’s our family heirloom.”

 

“You can take it off, when you get home.”

 

“Can they really charge you with desertion?”

 

“Well, I certainly don’t want to go back.”

 

“If you’re AWOL, it means that you intended to go back. That’s what you have to tell them.”

 

“It’s not true.”

 

“People have to lie to protect themselves, Blaine. It’s the way of the world.”

 

“Okay, I’ll lie.”

 

“Anything to stay alive. You don’t die, do you hear me?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“I mean it.”

 

“If I do though, just know that I love you.”

 

“Stop saying it like that.”

 

“I love you. I have always loved you.”

 

“Stop saying goodbye to me.”

 

“If I say it anymore, I fear I’ll stay here for good. I’ll go first. The sooner I go, the lesser my sentencing.”

 

Blaine turned around to leave their place, and Kurt stood and watched him, growing smaller in the long perspective of the rows and rows of trees. Knowing that if he stopped and turned around right now, if he called, Kurt would chase him and pin him him to the ground, love him right there beneath the leaves. Consummate their last engagement. He would have no choice.

 

Blaine did stop. He did turn, he did call. “Kurt!”

 

And Kurt ran to him.


End file.
